Reviews

Halo: Combat Evolved

System requirements aside, the good news is that Halo is the kind of game that may inspire you to upgrade your PC. The combat was already solid on the Xbox, but the addition of mouse / keyboard control elevates the action to the point where I can say it has maybe the best pure combat of any first-person shooter ... ever.

To start, Halo implements a few small changes to usual FPS conventions. You can only carry two weapons at a time, which means you're constantly making decisions about what weapons you should be carrying and looting dead enemies for guns and ammo. The traditional health / armor system has also been replaced with the Chief's special MJOLNIR armor, which can take a severe beating and recharges itself on a regular basis. When it's down, you're extremely vulnerable, so combat has a natural ebb and flow to it -- you move, shoot, take damage, retreat, recharge, repeat.

Halo also contains some of the best enemy AI ever seen in a videogame, and Bungie would do well to package it up and license it out to other developers. Between the Xbox and PC, I've now played Halo about five times, and rarely do battles play out the same way twice. Sometimes enemies split up, sometimes they stick together. Sometimes they hang back, sometimes they rush. If you try to snipe them, they'll duck for cover. If you try to run them over, they'll jump out of the way. The one constant is that on anything but the lowest difficulty setting, you never feel like you're fighting brainless bots (well, at least not until the Flood, another race of enemies, arrives). Playing through Halo is an engaging mix of straight-ahead action and tactical combat that I'm not sure exists in any other game to date.

It's handy having a few teammates loaded in the Warthog.

In addition to the on-foot combat, you'll get to control a number of vehicles in Halo, from the iconic Warthog and Scorpion tank to the Covenant Ghost hovercraft and Banshee fighter. All of these vehicles have successfully made the jump to the PC, and you're given full freedom to operate these vehicles in open spaces, which often provide a welcome breath of fresh air after you've been running around for a while.

The final piece in the puzzle is mouse/keyboard control, which is fully present, as is the ability to hook up a joystick, steering wheel, gamepad, or any other controller you desire. I downplayed this in my original Xbox review, but it wasn't until I played the PC version of Halo that I realized how much I missed the mouse and keyboard instead of a gamepad. I mean, it's like frickin' night and day. Yes, I know I've played a thousand PC shooters and you could accuse me of being biased, but playing Halo with a mouse and keyboard has been a near-religious experience. Despite the fact that Bungie did a great job laying out the controls for the Xbox version, there were still long stretches where I felt as if I were playing with boxing gloves on, which only got in the way of enjoying the combat. With that obstruction out of the way, I can easily state this is THE ultimate way to enjoy Halo - it's now a fair fight, and you won't find yourself cursing the controller when the Flood swarms from every direction. Sniping takes on an entirely new life -- even with the pistol -- and you'll find entirely new ways to approach situations that were once awkward at best.

The beach assault scene is one of Halo's most memorable.

And that, really, is why Halo clicks. All these elements gel together in a way that lets you decide how to fight. Instead of traditional boss fights, jumping puzzles or key hunts (of which there are none), Halo simply throws open-ended scenarios at you and asks you to plot a strategy and execute it as you see fit. Should you snipe enemies one by one from afar? Should you steal a Banshee and fight from the air? Should you jump into a turret and start blasting? More than any game I can remember, Halo opens an entire set of tactics and puts you in control.

The one drawback to all this is something I called "Halo's greatest flaw" in my original review, and hasn't been changed for the PC version: the level design. Many of the missions have repetitive sections that appear to have been copy-and-pasted together -- you walk out of one area, head into the next, and it looks exactly the same. It's as if someone saw an early version of Halo and said "Wow! This is an amazing game ... but you need to make it twice as long. Quickly." While these sections of Halo were tough to soldier through on the Xbox, the core combat is so much more enjoyable with the mouse and keyboard that even the monotonous Library mission -- which I think is one of the worst and most uninspired levels in FPS history -- takes on renewed life, and isn't the brain-numbing experience it was on the Xbox.